I met a client this week who shared after her session that she was surprised that I didn’t painfully dig in to her muscles. (She came to me by way of a gift certificate and hadn’t seen my website where I very clearly state that my style of bodywork is NOT painful.)
It gave me the opportunity to address what I believe is a very common myth that pushing really hard on sore muscles is the way to create relief. In my experience, this is absolutely not true! At least for me and the thousands of people I’ve worked with.
What happens when the body feels pain? It tenses. How does that help? It doesn’t.
And when someone is experiencing chronic pain, their muscles are already tense and their nervous system set to hyper-protection mode. Even the hint of pain activates an instinct to fight or flee. How does that help? It doesn’t!
Instead, I find that a soothing, gentle approach allows the nervous system to calm and the muscles to melt. I meet the painful areas with a curious and compassionate attention: “Hello, I see you there, what can I do for you?” Rather than an attack: “Bad muscle, I’ll pummel you into submission!”
I don’t know where where this “no pain, no gain” mentality comes from in the massage realm, but it saddens me that people think that they need to suffer to experience relief. Or worse yet, that because they are unwilling to suffer, bodywork is not for them.
There are tons of deep tissue therapists out there who want to jab an elbow into your achy spots. If that’s your thing, you’ll have no problem finding someone to hurt you. But it isn’t me.
If you are pain averse and want your session to be enjoyable while leaving you feeling relaxed and gooey, that’s my wheelhouse.
Working with the nervous system, musculoskeletal system, endocrine system, emotional and energetic bodies is a lot more nuanced and effective than pushing hard on a sore spot.
It doesn’t mean a feather-light touch, either, just in case that’s a concern. It means meeting the tissue as it is, sinking in as far as it allows, and responding when it says stop.
It’s a technique that respects the body and its innate wisdom rather than trying to force an arbitrary solution from the outside.
If you’re in the Philly area, I’m here to be of service. If you live elsewhere, don’t be afraid to inquire with the provider before you book a session. Any respectable therapist will be able to answer your questions and confirm if they are able to offer a pain-free experience.
I met a client this week who shared after her session that she was surprised that…
I recently saw a post online about self-care not being enough. It immediately caught my attention. I was intrigued thoroughly, mostly because it triggered my argumentative streak. The man went on to say that he was an active participant in self-care, but it wasn’t enough to prevent burnout.
He exercised daily and ate lots of vegetables and meditated regularly.
He also worked 60+ hours each week and had a few side gigs going.
While I can’t fault him for the self-care aspect, I’d say it was an incomplete attempt. Movement, nourishment, and mindfulness are all excellent practices. But they don’t override our need for a healthy work-life balance.
In my eyes, self-care includes knowing how much we can handle and modifying our lives so that we don’t overdo it.
It’s not that self-care wasn’t enough, but that he ignored part of the equation.
You’ve heard it all before- we all need adequate nutrition, hydration, oxygen, sunlight, exercise and rest to be healthy. You can eat all the broccoli in the world, but if you hardly ever drink water, it’s not going to be enough to stay well.
I’d like to redefine self-care as caring for ourselves with kindness and curiosity. This means paying attention to what we need and responding accordingly rather than following a protocol prescribed by a so-called expert. What I need is very different from what you need. Heck, what I need in this moment is different from what I needed last week. It’s always changing.
This requires developing our self-awareness and capacity to respond with compassion (rather than the pushing/forcing/punishing energy I often seen in runners or folks at the gym).
I endeavor to speak to myself the same way I would to my 10-year-old niece- I wouldn’t shout at her for getting something wrong or berate her for not trying harder or doing more. I’d be encouraging and willing to explore what could be done differently next time.
Rather than jumping on some TikTok bandwagon and following rules developed by someone who has a completely different constitution, history, and lifestyle than yourself, what if you slowed down and listened to your body? To your heart?
This, my friends, is revolutionary behavior and exactly what we need to thrive in a world that is full of stress and toxins. A few years back, I did a 40-day series on self-care if you need some ideas. You can search for the “Radical Self-Care” posts.
But don’t take those articles as a prescription or even a recommendation.
You do you. How could I know if you need more rest or activity or broccoli?
What is one small thing you could do for yourself today that would be a step towards optimal wellness? Don’t overthink it! I bet something has already popped into your mind. How can you make it happen? And this is an important step- afterwards, acknowledge the rewards of your efforts and give yourself a pat on the back. That will make it more likely that you’ll keep going.
I recently saw a post online about self-care not being enough. It immediately caught my attention.…
I saw this question raised online last week. A woman was inquiring about the dreadful statistics of Americans given that everyone she asks claims to eat healthfully.
It really got me thinking about the state of the world in which people try their best to look after themselves and fail.
Unsurprisingly, I have a lot to say about this!
In fact, I could probably write a book about my thoughts on this subject. I don’t have the energy to do that as I spend some much time on cultivating my own health. But as I pondered, two key factors have floated up to the top of my list of key offenders.
One. Chronic stress. Stress is normalized, even celebrated in our culture. It’s normal for people to spend more than half of their waking hours in a toxic work environment. The more you work, the busier you are, the more stress you have, the better. That’s the upside-down message we receive in this crazy society.
This is not healthy! If this describes your everyday reality, know that you’re going to need to take action to mitigate the effects of chronic stress by learning to regulate your nervous system and/or metabolize the physiological impact of being chronically disregulated.
We now know the damaging effects of a constant cortisol drip, but for many of us, there doesn’t seem to be an alternative. The system is rigged against us. Dropouts, misfits, and revolutionaries are able to escape this insanity, but you need to be a risk-taker to go this route.
Two. We’ve lost touch with our inner wisdom and turn to external “experts” for strategies about health. With so many doctors being specialists in one narrow corner of medicine, few have the big picture of wellness in mind. If you’re lucky enough to be able to afford a functional medicine doctor or homeopath, you’re still having to battle uphill against societal norms.
So often I hear people talking about their “healthy choices” and feel surprised at what they consider to be healthy. Low fat? Low carb? There’s so much conflicting information out there. So many of our strategies are influenced by advertisements sneakily disguised and normalized by repetition.
Milk- it does a body good. Remember this campaign from the 80’s? It an advertisement paid for by the dairy council! Milk may or may not be good for your body- we’re all different. But that isn’t a catchy slogan that people will recall for decades.
Trident- it’s what 2 out of 3 dentists recommend for their patients who chew gum. Another ad from my childhood. It sounds like dentists are promoting sugar-free gum, right? But I don’t think any dentist suggests chewing gum. They are definitely opposed to sugar-laden gum like good-ole Hubba Bubba, but I can’t see that any are promoting gum itself.
And 2 out of 3? Not out of every dentist, just those surveyed. Do you think that Trident was careful in its selection of dentists to survey? Yeah.
I don’t remember much from my college days, but I took Statistics and the professor spelled out all the different ways you can lie with numbers by carefully crafting statements to reflect the preferred outcome.
We’ve been overtly and covertly influenced by information that is designed to mislead us, to make us feed bad about ourselves, to believe that if we just purchase this or that, all will be well. But capitalism is about selling stuff, not creating wellness, and there’s a heck of a lot more purchasing going on by people who want to be well than by people who are well.
Ok, one more reason I can’t ignore.
Three. Our food supply is full of crap. We tinker with the genetic material of plants in a lab. If that doesn’t freak you out, one of the reasons for this tinkering is to make plants strong enough to survive a chemical pesticide that is so deadly, it would kill the plant otherwise. Then those plants are manufactured into “food”, along with residue of that toxic chemical.
Yum.
Labels are deliberately misleading. Recipes are engineered to be super-addictive so people buy more and more and more.
The whole system is whacked.
If you’re struggling with health despite doing your best, it’s not your fault. Billions of dollars are invested to fool you.
Please don’t despair! That’s not good for your health either. The situation isn’t hopeless. I wouldn’t be writing this post just to leave you feeling depressed.
Reiki can help.
It can help relieve stress, detoxify your body, and amplify your connection to your inner wisdom, clarity, motivation and intuition. Every day it helps me figure out my priorities and move in the direction I want to go.
It’s not your fault that this world is so unhealthy. But if you want to have a different experience than the one you’ve been having, it is your responsibility to do something different. That could mean changing your job, shopping at a farmers market and preparing more of your meals at home, or working with a naturopath.
Or schedule a Reiki session for yourself once or twice each month to build up your life-force energy and manage your stress. You don’t even need to go anywhere- distance treatments can be received from wherever you are with very little effort. Just click a few buttons, share your goals, and sit back to soak it all up.
I saw this question raised online last week. A woman was inquiring about the dreadful statistics…
This is a question often asked by a first-time client at the end of our session. This week it was a man wondering how I knew that his right foot had been troubling him when he hadn’t mentioned it during the intake.
He came for help with chronic back pain after having already been through all the tests and scans and been told by numerous doctors that he was “fine”.
But he didn’t feel fine. He was in constant pain. Clearly there was something out of whack, even if it couldn’t be seen on an MRI.
I know from experience that foot, knee, and hip alignment impacts the lower back. Put a rock in your shoe for a day and then notice how the pain ricochets up the legs and into the spine. It’s simple body mechanics that when we favor a sore spot, muscles compensate and protect and can easily throw the entire musculoskeletal system off balance.
I could tell this by looking at the position of his feet while he was lying on the table. I could clearly see that the right and left feet were very different from one another. I could especially tell when I touched his feet.
What he noticed is that I used a different technique on his right foot. I explained that because his feet were different from one another that they called for different strategies. My intuition and sense of touch informed me in the moment of how to proceed. Not some procedural manual or protocol.
A skilled and attuned bodyworker approaches each session with curiosity and compassion rather than an agenda. We’re not afraid to use gentle touch to explore painful areas to try and provide some relief.
I remember a time in college when my back was hurting. My friends and I were at a terrible sports bar. It was loud and crowded and I’d been standing too long. My roommate knew I was uncomfortable and laid her hand on my low back and made a few circular movements. I froze in place. Not because it was weird to be getting massage in that atmosphere, but because no one had even done that before and I’d been suffering from chronic pain for six years. I sensed then that the power of touch was some potent medicine even if I didn’t consciously understand what was happening.
It was many years after that aha moment that I found myself in training to become a massage therapist and Reiki practitioner and ever so eager to help others with chronic pain. An astrologer once told me that I was fated to work in the healing arts based on my natal chart. That may be true; it does seem like my entire life set me up to understand that there is more to healing than X-rays and prescriptions.
I soon developed a knack for finding the knots, the anomalies, the inconsistencies and exploring how to address them. It didn’t take me long to realize that pushing hard on a painful area did not produce lasting results. After doing thousands of sessions, it became easy to pinpoint the areas that needed attention. I can’t always explain it, but I soon become aware of an X that marks the spot during many sessions.
That’s how I know. That body doesn’t keep secrets, and I know how to listen.
I expect I’ll be seeing that man again soon. What’s really cool is that each session will be different because I’ll connect with him, his foot, and all his parts exactly as they are, discerning where the tension and constrictions lie.
My answer will be the same if he again asks, “How did you know?” I knew because I was tuned in to what the body was telling me and responded accordingly.
This is a question often asked by a first-time client at the end of our session.…
It’s no secret that health and happiness levels are influenced by self-care practices.
The often-overlooked element, however, is that self-care is an individual experience. Not a protocol that can be assigned by an outsider.
This is an inside process of learning to recognize what is needed in this moment, by this unique being. Which means it’s always in flux.
Sure, I have a foundation of self-care practices that are non-negotiable- rest, compassion, self-reflection, nourishment, movement, breath. But the strategies for addressing them is different all the time.
For me, there’s a lot of experimentation involved. I feel a need to strengthen my body, but how? There’s tons of advice online, but non of these people know my specific needs.
It’s been ages since I went to a gym, so I gave that a try. I don’t much care for the atmosphere (so many TV screens! WHY?) but it’s an affordable, easy way to access tons of fitness equipment.
After giving it a solid try for a month, I realize my original assessment was correct: not for me. But I didn’t really know until I tried.
Now I’m revisiting Foundation Training. I appreciate that it has a strong focus on anatomy, physiology and alignment. At one time it was very helpful to me but when a knee injury reappeared, I wasn’t able to do most of the exercises. That’s no longer an issue, so I’m giving it a go.
But here’s the takeaway: I’m not saying you should quit the gym and get an FT membership. I’m just sharing a real life example to make the point that we all need to get in touch with our own bodies and listen.
Look to the interweb for ideas, but do your own research.
Get the help you need if you’re suffering with a malady. AND then take that doctor/coach/therapist/counselor’s advise with a grain of salt and go with what feels right to you.
So many times I’ve worked with clients who followed the physical therapist’s or MD’s orders that caused more pain or delayed healing.
If you know something isn’t working, contemplate what you could do instead with this new data.
Be your own expert. Learn how to inhabit your body and hear your own truth. Take charge of your health and happiness and become a full participant in living your life fully.
Be willing to make mistakes and try things that dead end. Be willing to pivot when that happens and try something new.
Healing is not a linear path. Your zigs and zags, tangents and reroutes will be uniquely yours. Just pick one small thing and give it a try.
If you’re at a loss for where to begin, consider Reiki. This ancient healing modality can do no harm, can be received from anywhere in the world and feels incredibly relaxing.
It’s no secret that health and happiness levels are influenced by self-care practices. The often-overlooked element,…
Clients often ask me if I felt any bad energy during their session. As if there was something inherently wrong with the energy in their system.
I don’t see it that way.
I often sense energy that is diminished from over-giving/under-receiving or coping mechanisms that have a draining effect. Sometimes it feels sluggish from sedentary lifestyles or blocked from suppressed emotions or unprocessed trauma.
Occasionally it’s clogged in one area, causing a build up upstream and depletion downstream.
Mostly I sense an imbalance in the flow or a general lack of energy. I don’t ever feel energy that is “bad”. I’m not sure there is such a thing.
There are definitely emotions that are uncomfortable; those that we dislike and would prefer not to experience. Our efforts at avoiding them disrupt the flow of energy, but still, I wouldn’t call any emotion “bad”. Unwanted, perhaps, but to label it as bad makes it wrong somehow, and I don’t think that’s helpful.
Many of us have beliefs we absorbed as children about which emotions are acceptable. However, those beliefs are not based on Universal Truths- just some authority figure attempting to make us easier to manage. Just because your third-grade teacher was not equipped to witness grief or anger doesn’t make those feelings bad. Yet we often integrated those messages and began judging our very natural responses to difficult situations as problematic.
I have yet to meet someone with bad energy. I’ve met lots of people who weren’t skilled at expressing themselves or their feelings and were maybe carrying around a lot of unpleasant baggage. I’ve met folks whose energy was not compatible with my preferences and those who didn’t know how to regulate themselves. People with erratic energy, big energy, chaotic energy, or overwhelming energy.
But not bad energy. If you’ve been wanting to get some Reiki healing sessions but worry about the practitioner picking up some bad energy, you needn’t. Reiki transforms and heals whatever isn’t in balance. It doesn’t push it out into the room. That’s something that only happens in sci-if movies.
Let’s stop thinking about our emotions, our experiences, our wounds or our energy as bad. They just are. That makes it a whole lot easier to welcome them, which is the first step in the healing process.
Clients often ask me if I felt any bad energy during their session. As if there…
I’m getting older and let me tell you, it’s pretty amazing! Today is my birthday and rather than lamenting the fact that I’m aging, I’m celebrating. I’m not supposed to tell you that I’m 53, but I’m delighted to do so! I’m not ashamed to be in my 50’s. Quite the opposite. I find it quite empowering.
I know who I am and what I want in ways that I never did when I was younger. It’s very refreshing! No more am I trying to fit myself into someone else’s expectations and the sense of freedom is invigorating.
We’ve been sold a narrative that once you reach a certain age, health begins to fail. Well, that’s just bullshit! It’s perpetuated by the marketing industry trying to sell us stuff that treats the surface symptoms, but never the root cause. If it treated the cause, we wouldn’t need to buy it anymore.
The vast majority of symptoms that I see are simply a result of chronic stress, energetic overspending and under-receiving, suppressed emotions causing a continuous cortisol drip, exposure to toxic chemicals, and neglect/misuse/abuse of the body.
We have control over much of this!
This is the work I do. Relieving stress and pain, integrating emotions, supporting the body’s needs so it can detox and repair, and filling up the energetic tank. I see it working day after day in my clients and students and I am a living, breathing, joyful example that making healthful choices consistently has a tremendous impact on well-being.
What is one thing you can do today to nourish yourself?
What is one thing you can do today to support your body, mind, heart and spirit?
What is one thing you can do today that reduces your exposure to chemicals- be it in food, water, personal care products or your environment?
What is one thing you can do today to protect your energy? It might entails saying NO, better yet, HELL NO! to something you don’t want to do.
What is one thing you can do today to move your body in a way that feels pleasurable?
Just one thing! Do that one simple thing for a week or two and then add another thing.
I bet you already have a thing in mind. Something that you’ve been thinking about for a while and just lacking the motivation to take the plunge.
Today is the perfect day to get started on the next level of your healing journey. Any empowered action in the direction you want to go will ripple outwards and affect others as well.
If you want, you can get started right now by placing a hand on your heart and making a commitment to yourself.
Perhaps you’d like to repeat these words from the mindful self-compassion tradition:
May I be safe.
May I be healthy.
May I be at peace.
May I be kind to myself.
May I make choices to support my overall wellness.
If you’d like some support, that’s what I’m here for! I do Reiki healing sessions for people around the globe and soothing, nurturing bodywork here in Philadelphia. It’s my mission to spread this message of self-care and empowerment. I’d be delighted to work with you if that sounds appealing.
But not today. Today, I’m going on a hike, eating fabulous food, reading a fun book and connecting with my friends. I’ll be back in the office tomorrow and ready to give from my overflowing tank.
I wrote an article over on Substack about my process of reviewing the year through a holistic health and spiritual journey lens. Check out Annual Review if you’d like to learn more about this radical way of thinking.
I’m getting older and let me tell you, it’s pretty amazing! Today is my birthday and…
Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health by Casey Means, MD.
This book is blowing my mind! It has so much information about the causes of rampant lack-of-wellness and disease in our world and very straightforward remedies.
She exposes heavy duty conflicts of interest in the medical industrial complex, Big Pharma and the processed food industry.
Really, you want to know this stuff so you can make good choices about your habits to build optimal health.
There’s a lot of science and hard facts for those who want the numbers and nerdy stuff but it’s very readable. I can’t recommend it enough.
From her website:
ABOUT THE BOOK
What if depression, anxiety, infertility, insomnia, heart disease, erectile dysfunction, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer’s dementia, cancer and many other health conditions that torture and shorten our lives actually have the same root cause?
The truth is, they do. And our ability to prevent and reverse these conditions – and feel incredible NOW – is under our control and simpler than we think. The key is our metabolic function: the way we make energy in our cells and bodies. The ability to make GOOD ENERGY in our bodies is the most important and least understood factor in our overall health, and the biggest blindspot in healthcare.
Good Energy: The Surprising Connection Between Metabolism and Limitless Health by Casey Means, MD. This book…
SPOILER ALERT: Eventually it all turns out well.
There must be something wrong with me.
That’s the unconscious belief I grew up with. It wasn’t part of my rational thought process, yet it was there, lurking beneath the surface and driving much of my behavior.
Looking back with the knowledge that I’ve garnered over the decades of practicing holistic healing and studying the body-mind-spirit connection, I can see how it was installed during my formative years, before I had the cognitive awareness to argue that it’s utter nonsense.
The choices I made as a child for navigating this belief system were nearly as damaging as the belief itself. I was afraid to express myself or to be seen, hell, I was afraid to even sense that I had needs, let alone to do something about them. I swallowed my feelings and tried to be invisible.
This constant fear did a number on my nervous system, causing me to be perpetually hyper vigilant, jumpy, tense and shut down emotionally. It steadily eroded my life-force and gut health and ushered in chronic back pain. Without the energy or nutritional building blocks to repair the damage, chronic anxiety mixed with depression and fatigue set in. Without the awareness of what was really happening, all I knew was that I was extremely uncomfortable almost all the time and had no tools for handling this.
Naturally I turned to dulling and numbing these feelings and sensations with whatever was at hand. Books were my first escape strategy. Later came overeating and sweets, later still alcohol and pot, and co-dependent and dysfunctional relationships. Let’s not forget the people-pleasing and perfectionist tendencies, poor boundaries and overgiving, overspending, and attempting to micromanage everything.
Perhaps the worst of all? The betrayal of self to keep everyone else comfortable.
I did it all with stoicism, pretending that everything was fine and I was in control of my life.
I was not.
Through a bizarre set of “coincidences”, I found myself in a Reiki workshop one weekend in 2002. Little did I know that this was a pivotal moment in my life and that my trajectory would be forever altered.
I wasn’t yet aware of the complete absence of wellness in my life, but I instantly noticed a shift in the way I felt. I was less tense, less anxious, more at home in my body and the pain in my back decreased noticeably.
That was enough for me to carry on with my daily Reiki practice, slowly uncovering layer upon layer of wounds and scabbed over psychic infections that were poisoning me from the inside out. Over time, my nervous system became regulated more often than not and I was able to find a sense of ease and belonging that had eluded me my entire life. I kept at it, healing whatever rose to the surface rather than pushing it back into the archives of buried emotions.
I felt increasingly better physically and emotionally, and my confidence and self-worth gradually grew. I began to get in touch with my innate creativity and to experience more joy, peace, and dare I say, even pleasure.
I developed the curiosity, compassion and courage necessary to do the inner exploration and discovered the core belief that seems to be the foundation of my ailments. There must be something wrong with me. I know it isn’t true, but it’s a weed with tenacious roots. I’ve been gradually digging them up and have stopped feeding this weed with self-blame and self-criticism.
I suspect there is a a soul agreement to clear ancestral wounding at play here as other limiting beliefs have been much more responsive to my efforts. Yet, step by step, I continue making headway.
Whatever the source of this programming, my path is simple. I slow down and pay attention to what’s happening in me and meet it with Reiki and the loving intention to heal. If I were to focus on “how” to heal subconscious belief systems or ancestral trauma, I’d likely trigger overwhelm and doubt that I could handle such complex work.
Luckily, I don’t need to know how. Reiki knows. I just need to apply it consistently and be willing to receive the benefits. It’s been quite the adventure, this healing journey of mine. It’s wild to think that it all began one day in a funky old adobe building in Santa Fe, in my first Reiki 1 class.
If you’ve read this far, I imagine that some part of my story has resonated with you. It’s likely your story has different twists and turns, and your symptoms are different than mine, but I bet you have a core limiting belief that is wreaking havoc. You might be aware of it, you might not, but you probably have a sense that something is off.
That something, my friend, is not you. There’s nothing wrong with you. Someone taught you something that isn’t true a long time ago. If you’re willing to turn and face it, it can be healed. You don’t need to know how. Reiki knows.
I can easily provide you with this healing energy. You’ll need to get sessions on a consistent basis to work through all the layers. It’s much more affordable, however, for you to learn to do it yourself. If you’re in the Philly area, I have a class coming up soon. If you’re elsewhere, let’s connect about planning a remote training.
Whether you decide to take action at this time or not, do know that you aren’t alone. It’s rare that I meet someone who isn’t affected by something similar to this. And it’s not their fault. Nor yours. Sometimes just knowing this helps to begin the healing process.
If you’ve never been told, allow me to be the first. There is absolutely nothing wrong with you.And your spirit remains undamaged by any of the experiences you’ve had in this lifetime.
Luminous Heart Reiki & Massage 